Kathleen Mary 's posts with tag: 1918
This one is way too interesting to be ignored - well, surprise, surprise - what we have all known our entire lives, science now explains ... why does science bother with answering the questions that no one asks? We all know what flu season is... We spend a lot of the winter either dreading the Flu, living through the Flu or recovering from the Flu, don't we? A couple of years ago I was sick all of a January with the Flu. All of it. Didn't start feeling better until February. I don't know how others fare but I have spent way too many Thanksgivings, Anniversaries (mine is December 20th.) and Christmases totally and utterly miserable. So, a scientific and logical reason for Flu's preference for the holidays?
Oh, yes, people, there is ! The raw Science behind miserable, sick holidays.
If you have never read about the 1918 flu epidemic (called the Spanish Flu by the people of the time.) I suggest you do so, but read it with the lights ON. Its pretty horrific. It is one of those times you will be glad you missed - just under the Rape of Nanking and the winter of 1348.
My own parents lived through it - my dad being born in 1910 and my mom in 1913, but both were so young they did not understand it.
If you don't know anything ... here is a thumb nail from the top of my very cute Italian head :
At the height of the 1st. World War - just as America entered the war and millions of American men were entering the armed forces, a Flu strain appeared. The first American outbreak was in an army camp in Kansas, I believe. The men - all young and strong began to die like fleas on the back of a dog treated with flea soap. The flu may have had several names back then but it was no more a surprise then than it is now, but this strain was the very worse in a 100 years, perhaps more. It spread quickly, of course, men were traveling towards Europe and reaching Europe... It was world wide. It favored everyone but it seemed worse for the very young and the very strong. Men and women were literally dropping dead as they left their homes for work. It killed millions because it was so virulent. It wasn't the flu, itself, that usually killed the victims of the 1918 Flu pandemic. It was the pneumonia that followed the flu almost every time. It was very deep in the lungs, it was still nearly untreatable, and it killed quickly and very efficiently. It was an awful end for the those victims, but it could also be a very sudden death. They literally drowned in their own fluids.
The pandemic more or less ended WWI as soldiers on both sides of the front lines, died. The trenches of the First World War were a perfect place to breed this strain of the Flu. Modern Science has been obsessed with the 1918 flu pandemic because it was a grand test of the science of the time (Just when modern medicine was being born in the labs both in America and Europe.) and science scored a big fat '0'. They have found samples of lung tissue from soldiers of the time and they have even dug up victims buried in the frozen tundra of Alaska to search for information on the Flu strain that killed so many... They have identified it and cataloged it - but they never defeated the beast. The beast defeated science. If you want to read more about this I suggest the library : key words : 1918 pandemic, epidemiology, epidemics, Spanish Flu. Also, the net offers some information, of course... though, I always suggest books if you want to really understand a subject !
Wiki's
PBS
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/
CDC
There have also been some documentaries on the subject but they won't give much more than I just did - there was one on the 'American Experience' a while back that will send shivers up your back but won't add to your wealth of knowledge, to any great extent. I do suggest you watch it as an introduction, though.
On a different subject : My honey got home so late last night from Boeing I made him homemade biscuits and soup. I am making soup now because I found out that many canned soups have Sugar in them. I have no idea how many calories dinner had but I had only 1-1/2 biscuits, a little margarine and a 1/2 cup of soup. I think the only thing that truly drives me crazy about dieting is the doubt when I eat - the number of calories, the proper portions, that sort of thing.
|
|
